afrol News, 2 April - The family visit programme for Western Sahara refugees in Algerian camps is termed a "great success" by the UN and is continuing today. While the Sahrawis until now are being flown to the occupied territory's capital, El Aaiun, the UN refugee agency will also start direct flights to Dakhla, the territory's second city, starting next week.

Family visits between the refugees encamped in southern Algeria and their relatives in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara are continuing, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported today. "Today, another round of flights took off to carry more than 50 participants between the camps at Tindouf [in Algeria] and Laayoune [El Aaiun] in the territory," UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond today told the press in Geneva.

Starting from next Friday, 9 April, the UN Mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO) flights will start carrying people between Tindouf and Dakhla city in the territory in an exchange that will last for approximately four weeks, Mr Redmond informed. The programme will then shift to the smaller towns of Esmara (S'mara) and Buydur (Boujdour) and then back into El Aaiun for a new series of flights, he added.

The agency's family visits exchange programme in occupied Western Sahara allows some refugees to see their relatives for the first time in almost three decades. After the "great success" of its first phase - the visits to El Aaiun - it thus enters its second phase next week with flights to Dakhla.

Since early last month, MINURSO has been operating flights so that refugees who have lived near Tindouf for years because of the Moroccan occupation since the mid-1970s can see their relatives, and vice versa, for five-day periods. The programme is designed to promote face-to-face contact between people who have been separated since that.

- The operation has been going extremely well, the UNHCR's Mr Redmond today said. "People are overjoyed at finally getting a chance to see their relatives, sometimes after a separation of nearly 30 years."

The UNHCR has registered more than 8,500 Saharans who want to take part. According to Mr Redmond, during the first series of flights UNHCR has been working "to ensure that humanitarian cases - the elderly and sick - get to see their relatives." The programme has also included the first direct telephone contact between families separated by the conflict for thirty years.

The coastal town of Dakhla, which was called Villa Cisneros during Spanish colonisation, for a long time housed the Spanish administration of the territory, which later shifted to El Aaiun. Dakhla and the towns of Esmara and Buydur have been far less influenced by the three decades of Moroccan occupation than El Aaiun.

The territory's capital meanwhile houses great numbers of Moroccan immigrants transported there by the Rabat government and has seen rather large investments in infrastructure. The other towns still remain dominated by Sahrawis.

Since Spain withdrew from its colony, Moroccan forces have occupied the territory despite UN protests. Morocco and the Sahrawi liberation movement POLISARIO - who runs an exiled Sahrawi government from the Tindouf camps - still are in conflict over Western Sahara's future status. MINURSO has been in place since April 1991 to try to organise a referendum among Sahrawis, but has been met with massive obstruction.

The family visits programme was made possible as a confidence-building measure by the UN refugee agency after tough negotiations with the Rabat government and POLISARIO.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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